The lonely tech post thread.

[UnderOpenSky]

Those Reolink cameras actually look OK, and you can use them locally, without sending the video via China*. I bought a Reolink doorbell but haven't fitted it yet, so I can't comment on the quality, but they do seem reasonably priced. I'll probably be using Hikvision for my outdoor cameras.
The Coral accelerator does all the detection stuff. It's better to offload the job to that than the CPU, because they're far better at the job, apparently, and they'll just plug into any spare slot. I'll (hopefully) be dropping one in place of the WiFi card on the mini PC I have running Home Assistant. I haven't done much research past where you're at now, but this setup seems to be the way to go.

Home assistant isn't for everyone, and I try not to recommend it where possible, as it's a bit of a learning curve, but I've just reached the stage where my mother needs it at her house, as I've automated her central heating and I'm nearly done making a fuel level sensor/sender for her oil tank. She also has cameras all round the house, and all the lights are 'smart' so it all needs a central hub, that isn't in China, and Home Assistant seems to be the best option for that. It might not be essential but it's essential for nerds


*dunno if that applies to them all.

Oh god. I love a tech project, I'm just not sure I've got that much to automate. I ended up going with a Nest Thermostat as it's got to be used by the OH, so needs to just work, but stuff like this I don't mind playing with. Mind you I've just got a new outside LED PIR light and when I saw I could have remote control, rather than faffing with screws for PIR settings I jumped on it, so I maybe I missed a trick not getting a smart one and I've got more uses for it then I first think. I'll concentrate on the NVR part first anyway....

It looks like with Reolink you need to be careful, some of them work great with Frigate, others it's hard to get certain features working. I'd actually forgotten about Hikvsion, assumed they were out my price range, but some are really well priced!. When I started with that MSP three years one of my first projects in tech was getting a securities company own system setup using their kit and remember being blown away by image quality. Amcrest seems to come up a lot, but it seems they cost way more in the UK than the US.

Looks like you can get those Coral accelerators as USB which I think is more interesting as you can move it between machines. I need to work out if Frigate would be best on my older 18 core Xeon or my tiny 9th gen USFF which is also my Plex server. This project will also give me the kick up the arse to set up some VLANs as if I'm using this much chinese kit, I'd quite like a little bit of isolation.

Edit - What's made you pick Frigate over Blue Iris which seems to pop up a lot?

 

[Saul Goodman]

Oh god. I love a tech project, I'm just not sure I've got that much to automate. I ended up going with a Nest Thermostat as it's got to be used by the OH, so needs to just work, but stuff like this I don't mind playing with. Mind you I've just got a new outside LED PIR light and when I saw I could have remote control, rather than faffing with screws for PIR settings I jumped on it, so I maybe I missed a trick not getting a smart one and I've got more uses for it then I first think. I'll concentrate on the NVR part first anyway....

It looks like with Reolink you need to be careful, some of them work great with Frigate, others it's hard to get certain features working. I'd actually forgotten about Hikvsion, assumed they were out my price range, but some are really well priced!. When I started with that MSP three years one of my first projects in tech was getting a securities company own system setup using their kit and remember being blown away by image quality. Amcrest seems to come up a lot, but it seems they cost way more in the UK than the US.

Looks like you can get those Coral accelerators as USB which I think is more interesting as you can move it between machines. I need to work out if Frigate would be best on my older 18 core Xeon or my tiny 9th gen USFF which is also my Plex server. This project will also give me the kick up the arse to set up some VLANs as if I'm using this much chinese kit, I'd quite like a little bit of isolation.

Edit - What's made you pick Frigate over Blue Iris which seems to pop up a lot?

I don't have an answer for that. Maybe the default position has changed since I looked into it a year ago. Things keep getting put on the long finger, and time passes very quickly these days.

 

[Saul Goodman]

I bought one of these, for an experiment.




It's a water distilling thing. It boils the water and passes the resulting steam through an air-cooled coil to condense it again, and switches the machine off once it boils dry.
It's a simple system, with a thermal cut-out switch that activates once the temperature rises a bit above boiling... so I made it a bit smarter.

I printed a spacer for the base, to facilitate the fitting of an SCR, to control the power to the heating element.





And an ESP32 with a touchscreen, to govern the SCR's output to the heating element, with the aid of a temperature sensor.



A few hours in Solidworks, to draw an enclosure for the controller.



And quickly printed a prototype.


View attachment k1_Case Front and Rear-v1.4.gcode_07-11-2024_16h14.mp4





Added a buck converter and an opto-isolated interface between the SCR and the ESP32, for the sake of not electrocuting oneself.
And some code, to bring it all together.




It's shame I no longer drink alcohol.

 

[UnderOpenSky]

I bought one of these, for an experiment.

View attachment 450487


It's a water distilling thing. It boils the water and passes the resulting steam through an air-cooled coil to condense it again, and switches the machine off once it boils dry.
It's a simple system, with a thermal cut-out switch that activates once the temperature rises a bit above boiling... so I made it a bit smarter.

I printed a spacer for the base, to facilitate the fitting of an SCR, to control the power to the heating element.


View attachment 450488
View attachment 450489

And an ESP32 with a touchscreen, to govern the SCR's output to the heating element, with the aid of a temperature sensor.

View attachment 450491

A few hours in Solidworks, to draw an enclosure for the controller.

View attachment 450492

And quickly printed a prototype.


View attachment 450502



View attachment 450496

Added a buck converter and an opto-isolated interface between the SCR and the ESP32, for the sake of not electrocuting oneself.
And some code, to bring it all together.

View attachment 450495


It's shame I no longer drink alcohol.

I'm both incredibly impressed, but also slightly confused. Why do you need to distill water?

 

[UnderOpenSky]

I don't have an answer for that. Maybe the default position has changed since I looked into it a year ago. Things keep getting put on the long finger, and time passes very quickly these days.

Yes, I can relate to that.

I ordered a £20 TP Link 2k indoor WiFi camera as a toy to play with

 

[Saul Goodman]

I'm both incredibly impressed, but also slightly confused. Why do you need to distill water?

Depending on where you live, tap water can be more than a little nasty.
I suppose I should also add a program to distill water.

Yes, I can relate to that.

I ordered a £20 TP Link 2k indoor WiFi camera as a toy to play with

I have a couple of TP-Link cameras to check in on the cats while I'm away from home

 

[UnderOpenSky]

Depending on where you live, tap water can be more than a little nasty.
I suppose I should also add a program to distill water.


I have a couple of TP-Link cameras to check in on the cats while I'm away from home

It's fucking shit and going back to Amazon this week

I can't even see the image quality. I can't even get the dam thing to pair properly. I'm actually far to busy for the next few weeks to start this project, but I'm tired of study and thought I'd have a play with the default app. I've wasted an over an hour on it, despite my lack of time. I mean, I work in tech ffs*, I should be able to set up some shitty consumer IOT junk.

Out of laziness, I tried attaching it to main SSID. Failed several times, despite the motor spinning it round and LEDs looking like they were doing something. Had a horrible flashback from four years ago when I suggested somewhere I worked bought TP Link smart sockets, and I was responsible for setting them. Disabled the 5ghz band on my setup. No joy. Set up fresh SSID with just 2.4Ghz and everything as basic as it could be without writing out a sign that says free candy to anyone driving past. It pairs and then refuses to connect. Tells me to check my signal. It's in a room with semicommercial hard-wired AP. Even gave it a static IP. Fucked around with phone settings. It's a shame as I quite liked the idea of something wifi to play with as I tried different systems as I could move it round the house.

What amazes me is how bad some of the TP Link consumer shit is and yet their Omada line is awesome. I mean, it's not going to replace Cisco scale, but I very rarely see a bad word said about it for decent sized deployments and it's cheaper than Ubiquiti and don't fuck with their customers so much or have as many security breaches (that we know off).

* not saying I'm good at it or anything

 

[UnderOpenSky]

On the plus side what's blown me away today has been Google Gemini. I'm a huge fan of ChatGPT, it's how I blag my way through life, I tried the web version of Gemini and the answers are better than Co-Pilot, but it doesn't look back over your conversation in the same way, so is ultimately far less useful as you've got to type longer questions.

I downloaded the Gemini app so I can talk to it and wow. I've never really been impressed with smart speakers, and the only time I use voice is in the car to change a track on Spotify. But this is next level. I've got an exam Friday and was stuck in traffic for an hour, so just started asking questions about concepts I'd revised earlier, getting it give more detail when I needed it. I then told it what exam I was doing and got it to ask me questions. Most tech exams are multiple choice, so that was actually quite hard but good practice in a different sort of way (meetings with managers where I have to explain things). It would accept or refuse my answer, but even if correct would add bits. I came in and kept using it whilst I prepared dinner. I accept this isn't a normal thing to do, but it's the first time I've been really impressed with something for a little while.

 

[two sheds]

I've a load of LPs which I want to sell. Very early on I learned not to lend them out to people because they either come back scratched from the deck's needle or from people sliding - not carefully placing - them back in their sleeve.

I'd like to check on their quality but also listen to some of them. I'm sort of wondering whether I could take a photograph of an LP, and instruct some AI program to follow the groove and give me say an ogg vorbis file of what the music sounds like, given that a needle would pick up the various frequencies of vibrations.

 

[farmerbarleymow]

I've a load of LPs which I want to sell. Very early on I learned not to lend them out to people because they either come back scratched from the deck's needle or from people sliding - not carefully placing - them back in their sleeve.

I'd like to check on their quality but also listen to some of them. I'm sort of wondering whether I could take a photograph of an LP, and instruct some AI program to follow the groove and give me say an ogg vorbis file of what the music sounds like, given that a needle would pick up the various frequencies of vibrations.

Couldn't you play them and record them directly via that route?

 

[two sheds]

I do have a record deck but I've never liked the format - besides the risk of bouncing the head across the record, if the deck's (ancient) needle is off I'm convinced it would bugger it.

Eta: thinking about it all except a few I can get digitally - it's more that I'd like to know whether the quality is still good so I can say what the condition is.

But I doubt whether AI could tell whether there's distortion because of a blunt needle

Eta: ignore that post

 

[Saul Goodman]

It's fucking shit and going back to Amazon this week

I can't even see the image quality. I can't even get the dam thing to pair properly. I'm actually far to busy for the next few weeks to start this project, but I'm tired of study and thought I'd have a play with the default app. I've wasted an over an hour on it, despite my lack of time. I mean, I work in tech ffs*, I should be able to set up some shitty consumer IOT junk.

Out of laziness, I tried attaching it to main SSID. Failed several times, despite the motor spinning it round and LEDs looking like they were doing something. Had a horrible flashback from four years ago when I suggested somewhere I worked bought TP Link smart sockets, and I was responsible for setting them. Disabled the 5ghz band on my setup. No joy. Set up fresh SSID with just 2.4Ghz and everything as basic as it could be without writing out a sign that says free candy to anyone driving past. It pairs and then refuses to connect. Tells me to check my signal. It's in a room with semicommercial hard-wired AP. Even gave it a static IP. Fucked around with phone settings. It's a shame as I quite liked the idea of something wifi to play with as I tried different systems as I could move it round the house.

What amazes me is how bad some of the TP Link consumer shit is and yet their Omada line is awesome. I mean, it's not going to replace Cisco scale, but I very rarely see a bad word said about it for decent sized deployments and it's cheaper than Ubiquiti and don't fuck with their customers so much or have as many security breaches (that we know off).

* not saying I'm good at it or anything

If I remember rightly, one of the cheap TP-Link cameras I bought was a bastard to set up, until I discovered that you needed to download and install an app on the PC to make it happen.
Or I might be thinking of one of the others. I have quite a few. Most of them resigned to junk boxes.

 

[Saul Goodman]

It's fucking shit and going back to Amazon this week

And as if by magic, I just got an email from amazon.

 

[Elpenor]

I've a load of LPs which I want to sell. Very early on I learned not to lend them out to people because they either come back scratched from the deck's needle or from people sliding - not carefully placing - them back in their sleeve.

I'd like to check on their quality but also listen to some of them. I'm sort of wondering whether I could take a photograph of an LP, and instruct some AI program to follow the groove and give me say an ogg vorbis file of what the music sounds like, given that a needle would pick up the various frequencies of vibrations.

I was trying to find a cd on eBay, anyway I discovered that there was no cd available as this album was only ever released on vinyl. Not a fan of vinyl myself, but one of the blokes selling it on vinyl had a link to a Dropbox or similar recording of the record so you could listen to it and check it was good quality.

So I just listened to the digital version he had created once and that was enough for me

I’ll try and find the eBay link and PM you in case that’s any help?

 

[UnderOpenSky]

I was trying to find a cd on eBay, anyway I discovered that there was no cd available as this album was only ever released on vinyl. Not a fan of vinyl myself, but one of the blokes selling it on vinyl had a link to a Dropbox or similar recording of the record so you could listen to it and check it was good quality.

So I just listened to the digital version he had created once and that was enough for me

I’ll try and find the eBay link and PM you in case that’s any help?

Pretty sure that breaches all kinds of rules and laws. I like it.

I guess your average collector though isn't fussed about piracy as you don't buy vinyl just for the music.